post/619328458525409280 is tagged as "Lost Beekeeping Footage". What is this lost footage? I tried looking up the episode but couldn't find any more information about it. Why did they cut it? Was it Holmes as a beekeeper or someone else, and if it was Holmes do we know how they planned to fit that into the timeline given that he was living at Baker Street during this episode? (I know we might not have answers to these questions but now I'm really curious!)

Well, lucky for us there are answers to ALL those questions, and sometimes even several answers to the same question, keeping that in mind, here we go:

What is this lost footage? There are two answers for it: According to The Falk Archive (which is a huge collection of photographs taken during the production of the series by the people who worked on it, and was originally the personal archive of Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke ! ) this was a sequence filmed for The Second Stain episode. In the corresponding canon story, Watson opens the narration reporting Holmes has retired and now spends his time keeping bees, and that now he’s, at last, telling the Second Stain story after Holmes has finally given the consent for it to be published: 

But, according to this site, Linda Pritchard’s Interview with Sherlock book, and this livejournal entry there’s also the possibility that it was filmed together with The Return of Sherlock Holmes episodes, for an unreleased short episode called “Beekeeping in Sussex” around 1986.

The reason for this was that the producers didn’t know if The Return was going to be a success and so, this short was meant to be released at the end of the season as a closing for the series, with Holmes retiring after The Six Napoleons case. BUT, The Return was even more successful than the two previous seasons and the series was renewed which meant that there was no need to release the short episode, and so this 7-minute segment was shelved in the Granada vault, and probably destroyed.

Why did they cut it? Some sources say that it was because of time constrains, and then “producers thought an entire episode could be created from it and shelved the scene for later use. No episode was ever made, the scenes were never made public and the film was destroyed.” (source)

Was it Holmes as a beekeeper or someone else? and if it was Holmes do we know how they planned to fit that into the timeline given that he was living at Baker Street during this episode? Given that it was inspired by the events at the beginning of The Second Stain story, it was Holmes as a beekeeper, and you can see that in the photographs by the gear he’s so fabulously wearing.

And that’s it! it turned out to be more information than I thought it would be about it out there and I had such a good time researching all this, thanks so much for asking! 🐝🌿